You can’t have a society of grumpy old men. Grump One.

Was there really ever a time when P.J. O’Rourke was funny?

I remember there was a time when I felt obligated to think he was.  That was a long time ago, back when he first appeared on the scene.  After all, there was supposedly no reason a conservative couldn’t be funny and there were plenty of reasons to think life in a liberal society was funny.  Life is generally ridiculous for human beings, no matter how liberally a society has ordered itself, and on top of that I knew enough liberals who were insufferable human beings and deserved ridicule, including myself.  In that way liberals have of siding against themselves in an argument, I was more than willing to accept a good satirizing from the right, although as the likes of Mark Twain, Walt Kelly, Garry Trudeau, Russell Baker, Woody Allen, Lily Tomlin, Richard Pryor, and George Carlin had made clear, liberals were pretty effective and funny when it came to satirizing themselves.

But I was more than willing to give O’Rourke a chance.

I don’t remember though ever responding to anything he wrote with more than a grim smile and a rueful shake of the head.  I gave up reading his stuff without noticing I’d given it up and definitely without missing it, because what struck me about O’Rourke wasn’t that he was a conservative, it was that he was a very grumpy young man.

And a grumpy young man who couldn’t wait to be a grumpy old man.

I was a grumpy enough young man on my own.  I didn’t need the encouragement.

Now I’m a grumpy old man.  But guess what.

O’Rourke is too.

Here’s an example of a recent bout of grumpy old man O’Rourke’s grumpery, which I wouldn’t have found on my own, Andrew Sullivan had to find it for me, and thanks a lot for that Andrew.  O’Rourke:

I think we lost the election on November 2…

We will win an election when all the seats in the House and Senate and the chair behind the desk in the Oval Office and the whole bench of the Supreme Court are filled with people who wish they weren’t there…

In a free country government is a dull and onerous responsibility. It is a parent-teacher conference. The teacher is a pompous twit. Our child is a lazy pain in the ass. We undertake this social obligation with weary reluctance. And we only do it at all because the teacher (political authority) deserves cold stares, hard questions, and maybe firing, and the pupil (that portion of society which, alas, needs governing) deserves to be grounded without TV and have its Internet access screened and its allowance docked…

America’s elected and appointed officials ought to be longing to return to their personal lives and private interests. They should feel burdened by their powers, irked with their responsibilities, and embarrassed at their prominence in the public eye. When they say they want to spend more time with their families, they should mean it.

I can’t be sure, but I think Sullivan linked to this fatuous bit of grousing by a cranky old Republican approvingly.

I think it speaks to Sullivan’s innocent faith in the goodness and niceness that will return to the land when the nation finally limits itself to the small government conservativism of his dreams.

And, superficially, O’Rourke seems to be calling for the libertarian dream of that government which governs least.  Politicians who don’t want to take the time to run things won’t burden us all with a government that takes time to run, one with lots of rules but also, you know, one that provides lots of services.

It’s a cliche that the first disqualification for holding public office should be wanting to hold that office.   And it’s a cliche because there’s a truth in it.  Who in their right mind would want the job?  Who with any normal amount of modesty and self-knowledge would think they deserved the job or could handle it?  Standing for public office is a declaration of dangerous arrogance.   Only the foolish, the power-mad, or those who see an advantage to themselves, usually in the form of a profit, would want the job?

You’d think.

But it turns out that an amazing number of well-meaning, decent-minded, self-reflective people who, seeing problems that need to be solved and recognizing in themselves some talent for solving problems, feel drawn to the job both by the personal satisfaction of putting their talents to work and a sense of duty and responsibility to put those talents to work for the general good.

It’s a good idea to keep a close eye on politicians in order to protect ourselves from the foolish, incompetent, power-mad, and thieving. 

But it’s not necessary to think that every politician is foolish, incompetent, power-mad, and thieving in order to do it.

The notion that all professional politicians are incompetent or corrupt or both is more prevalent on the right, these days, because it’s a useful notion for conservatives who want nothing more from government than to be left alone to make themselves as rich and comfortable as they can without guilt or responsibility.

Politicians who want to solve problems tend to be liberal.  Solving problems means doing things.  Doing things usually means spending money.  Doing things also means admitting that things need to be done, that there are problems with the way things are that need to be solved.

That means admitting that a system you happen to be profiting from might have to change, putting your profit, which may be spiritual or psychological as well as material, at risk.  It may mean admitting that your profit under the old way was somehow undeserved.  It may mean admitting that the other people’s failure to profit under the old way was not their fault.

It means admitting that you have some responsibility to help bring about the change.

It means that other people have a claim on your time and attention, not to mention money.

Nothing makes a grumpy old conservative grumpier than the idea that he owes something to other people, especially any of his money, but also any of his concern.

End of Grump the First. Click on the link for Grump the Second.

Comments

[Lee]

Hear, hear.

[actor212]

Was there really ever a time when P.J. O’Rourke was funny?

I'm betting back in his Lampoon days...

After all, he co-wrote the Lemmings stage show and the Yearbook (both of which hugely influenced Animal House) and even if he wasn't as funny as Doug Kenney, I figure on sheer bullshit volume, *some* of his jokes had to make me laugh.

A little.

[Linkmeister]

O'Rourke suffers from the same disease a lot of Republicans (although not the elected ones) do: a worship of Cincinnatus. "Citizen-statesmen" are the ideal; professional public servants are forever suspect. That's why they loved term limits and wrote the Citizen Legislature Act into the Contract with America. The fact that they failed to get a 2/3 majority as required for a Constitutional Amendment showed that the professionals really didn't like them.

[Rana]

I thought he was funny when I was in my 20s, then I heard him in person at a college where I was teaching. It's a very different experience when he's aiming his barbs at you, directly, as you sit there in his audience. It's even worse when the audience consists of a mixture of people laughing uproariously at his insults (and thus at you), and people like yourself sitting quiet and defensive. The remainder was mostly sophomoric anti-government stuff of the kind that college students eat up - no complexity, no subtlety, no evidence, just opinion delivered in a witty manner. It wasn't fun, and I've not been able to find him all that funny since.